Comcast Corporation v. Behrend
United States Supreme Court
133 S.Ct. 1426 (2013)
Behrend and roughly two million similarly situated plaintiffs sued Comcast (defendant) for antitrust violations, alleging Comcast monopolized the Philadelphia cable market through swap deals with other providers. Their expert built a damages model covering four theories, but the district court certified the class based on only one theory (the "overbuilder" theory), even though the model didn't isolate damages attributable to that specific theory; the court of appeals affirmed, reasoning that requiring the model to match the certified theory would improperly reach the case's merits at the certification stage.
Whether, on a motion for class certification, a court must perform a rigorous analysis to determine whether damages can be proven by evidence common to the class, thereby satisfying the predominance criterion required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3).